Mesopotamia: the key to the future

3 . ...'.-.

V

^ ,

o

o

p

O^ntncU lmuBt0ttg Cihrarg

JWjata, Jfeiu gnrb

Ts.K.3>V v:\te.

Cornell University Library
D 468.P22

Mesopotamia:

3 1924 027 921 844

Cornell University
Library

The original of tliis book is in
tlie Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027921844

MESOPOTAMIA :

THE KEY TO THE FUTURE

MESOPOTAMIA:

THE KEY TO THE FUTURE

BY

CANON J. T. R\RFIT

Author of "Twenty Years in Baghdad and Syria,'' etc.

HODDER & STOUGHTON

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

MCHXVU

l(\f^^t3%S

Part I.
ITS ANCIENT GLORIES.

Part II.
ITS DREARY DESOLATION.

Part III.
ITS FUTURE PROSPECTS.

MESOPOTAMIA :

THE KEY TO THE FUTURE

PART I.

MESOPOTAMIA :
ITS ANCIENT GLORIES.

MESOPOTAMIA and its adjacent
plains have been associated with the
most important turning-points of
history. Geographically situated at the heart
of the Eastern Hemisphere, these lands have
frequently played a leading part in the
world's activities. They have contained for
millenniums the capital cities of great world-
empires. They have been closely connected
with the most thrilling epochs of history, and,
once again, by reason of the Bagdad railway
schemes, Mesopotamia controls the main
currents of this unprecedented commotion
and holds the key to the whole world's
future.

Many kindly friends have often, in jest,
called me "the Rural Dean of the Garden of
Eden," in order to remind me that man's
earthly paradise was situated somewhere in
my Mesopotamian parish ; but I protest that

2 Mesopotamia :

I have never seen it, for, under the Turkish
regime, that primitive paradise was unfor-
tunately nowhere to be found.

I met, however, in Bagdad a clever im-
postor, a wily tobacconist. Who closed up his
shop and travelled extensively through
Europe and America, collecting large sums
of money from gullible Westerners by posing
as the famous "Discoverer of Noah's Ark and
the Golden Mountains of the Moon." These
also I have never seen ; but, apart from all
spurious claims and fantastic titles, it is
nevertheless true that Mesopotamia cradled
the human race, nurtured it for centuries,
until a new era was introduced by the Flood
incidents, which are recorded not only in the
Hebrew Scriptures, but also in interesting
cuneiform inscriptions that have been un-
earthed by archaeologists in Mesopotamia.

This is essentially a land of origins. The
oldest sea route in the world, utilised by the
first navigators of the high seas, was the
Persian Gulf; and the numerous mounds at
Bahrain remind us of the world's debt to the
Phoenicians, who gave us the alphabet and
the earliest system of weights and measures,
and who originally migrated to Syria from
the shores of the Persian Gulf and the ports
of Mesopotamia. From this land also the
Hebrew race took its rise when Abraham
came from Ur of the Chaldees and settled in
Canaan.

Its Ancient Glories 3

This is the home of the mighty Nimrod,
the earliest of hunters, who founded Calneh
or Nippur, where I was privileged to see some
of the most ancient Assyrian treasures being
excavated by American archaeologists. Oft-
times have I travelled from Busrah on
British ships conveying hundreds of Arab
ponies to India, when I recalled the fact that
horses were introduced into Mesopotamia
4,000 years ago by the Kassites, who, largely
on account of their superior mobility, were
able to conquer a country whose inhabitants
till then had used only asses and cattle for
transport.

Philologists may rejoice while others will
weep over the fact that in this plain of
Shinar the Confusion of Tongues and the
multiplication of dialects took place at a
time when cuneiform characters became con-
founded and the dwellers in Mesopotamia
were driven forth to colonise the continents.

But Babylon was also the mother of
astronomy, and to her ancient system of
dividing the day we are indebted for the
twelve divisions on the dials of our clocks.

The influence of Hammurabi's famous laws
has penetrated down the ages into the legal
codes of modern times through the intricate
systems of Greek and Roman legislators.

The most curious ruin in Mesopotamia is
the unsightly mound of Akker Kuf, near
Bagdad, connected, we are told, with the

4 Mesopotamia :

remote period of King Kurigalzu, who
reigned in Babylon about the time when
Moses was leading the Israelites from Egypt
to Canaan. Those ancient monarchies of
Babylonia, Assyria, Parthia, Media, and
Persia were great and powerful in their day,
exercising a paramount influence for many
centuries over the major part of the world's
politics, so that no other portion of the
earth's surface has more constantly affected
the history of mankind, or harboured for so
long the forces that moved the world, than
this land of Mesopotamia.

The extensive ruins of Assur, north of
Tikrit ; the mounds of Nineveh, on the
bank of the Tigris opposite to the modern
city of Mosul ; the ruins of Babylon, on the
Euphrates ; and the arch at Ctesiphon, all
testify to the old-world glories of this
wonderful land.

For nearly twenty years excavators have
been busily attempting to uncover the brick-
built palaces and temples of Nebuchad-
nezzar ; but more than twenty years will be
required to clear away the debris from the
buried marble monuments of Nineveh.

Nebuchadnezzar only revived the more
ancient glories of Babylon when he made it
the greatest city in the world. He was a
remarkable builder of magnificent temples
and palaces ; but he also extended his
military conquests over Syria, Palestine, and

Its Ancient Glories 5

Egypt. When Cyrus the Persian shattered
the Neo-Babylonian monarchy he found an
enormous reservoir to the north of the
capital, into which he drained the great
river and entered the city through the dry
bed of the Euphrates.

The name of Cyrus recalls the return of the
Jews from their Babylonian captivity and
the achievements of such remarkable men as
Nehemiah and Ezra. There are probably
80,000 Arabic-speaking Jews now resident in
Mesopotamia, who guard with reverence the
traditional tombs of Joshua the High Priest
near the city of Bagdad, of the prophet
Ezekiel near the banks of the Euphrates, and
of Ezra the scribe on the Tigris near
Kurnah.

It was Cyrus who conquered and captured
the famous Croesus with his fabulous wealth.
It was his son, Cambyses, who brought from
Mesopotamia an army that snatched Egypt
from the Pharaohs. Darius, his successor,
bridged the Hellespont, and was defeated by
the Greeks at Marathon, while his son,
Xerxes, who is thought to be the Ahasuerus
of the Book of Esther, is reported to have
mobilised and maintained in the field an
army of five million men, gathered from
India, Armenia, Persia, and Mesopotamia.
He, too, bridged and crossed the famous
Dardanelles; he fought with Leonidas at
Thermopylae; he burned Athens; and only

6 Mesopotamia :

retired to Mesopotamia after his navy was
defeated at the battle of Salamis.

In every school where ancient Greek is
taught the pupils are thriUed with the
exploits of Xenophon, who extricated the ten
thousand from the plains of Mesopotamia
and led them towards Erzeroum and Trebi-
zond, back to Greece.

Alexander the Great routed the Persians
near Arbela, where, in the miserable modern
Erbil, I, too, once fought all night with an
army of ravenous cats and voracious vermin
that devoured my breakfast and drove me at
dawn from the dirtiest khan in Mesopotamia.

On his return from India, Alexander chose
the banks of the Euphrates for the capital
city of his contemplated -world-empire, but
before his plans were completed he died at
Babylon. His successors, who built Seleucia
and adorned Diarbekr with beautiful build-
ings of costly marble and porphyry, suc-
cumbed to the rising power of Rome.

Mark Antony failed in B.C. 33 to acquire
the Asiatic treasures he sought for in Palmyra,
and met with disaster at the hands of the
Parthians, who founded Ctesiphon, the
capital of Mesopotamia for nearly six cen-
turies. The Parthians supported the Palmy-
reans till their city was destroyed by Aurelian,
who captured the brave and beautiful Queen
Zenobia on the banks of the Euphrates.

Persia and Rome struggled for supremacy

Its Ancient Glories 7

in Mesopotamia for nearly four centuries.
Trajan, the conqueror of Jerusalem, captured
Ctesiphon from the Parthians, and advanced
a Roman army for the first and only time to
the shores of the Persian Gulf ; but he failed
to take Hatra, a remarkable city— the home
of architecture— about fifty miles south-west
of Nineveh, now a comparatively unknown
site, where are some of the best-preserved
ruins I have seen in Mesopotamia.

Seleucia has completely disappeared, and
the great arch at Ctesiphon is all that remains
of the wonderful palace of Chosroes II, who
was the last and the most remarkable mon-
arch of the Persian Sassanian dynasty.
Mesopotamia was still a glorious country
when Khalid conquered it for the Arabs and
Islam, for ten millions of people then flour-
ished in these well-irrigated plains, and nine-
tenths of its fertile soil was brought under
cultivation by the Chosroes, while Bagdad,
under the Arabs, subsequently became the
wealthiest and most civilised city in the
world, with nearly two million inhabitants
in its palmy days.

Mesopotamia is a land of holy places and
sacred memories to the three hundred millions
of Mohammedans in the world. There is a
magnificent mosque at Kazmain, where two
gilded domes cover the tombs of eminent
Imams ; there is another beautiful mosque
at Samarra. These are Shiah shrines ; but

8 Mesopotamia :

within a mile of Kazmain, on the left bank of
the Tigris, is the stately Hanii mosque of
the Sunnis at Muaththam, and in Bagdad
itself there is the famous mosque of the great
commentator Sheikh Abd ul Kadir, visited by
devotees from the far distant Morocco. There
are many other mosques and tombs of- minor
importance, but which are nevertheless well
known throughout the Moslem world, such
as the tomb of Mohammed's barber, Salman
Pak, within a stone's throw of the ruined arch
of Ctesiphon. There are two sacred places,
however, near the banks of the Euphrates
which are second only in importance to the
sacred cities of Mecca and Medina. These are
the holy cities of Kerbela and Nejif, where
were enacted the tragedies commemorated by
the Shiahs everywhere, and in India by
Sunnis and Shiahs alike, in the Passion play
and festival of the tenth day of Moharram.
Ali, the fourth Khalif of Islam, is buried at
Nejif, and the disputes which arose concern-
ing his successor were those that rent the
followers of the prophet into two great sects
of Sunnis and Shiahs, and caused the death
of Hosein, whose tomb at Kerbela is regarded
as the most sacred spot on earth by one-half
of the Moslem world. Nearly 100,000 pilgrims
from Persia and India pass annually through
Bagdad to Kerbela and Nejif, carrying with
them thousands of embalmed corpses for burial
in the sacred soil around these holy shrines.

Its Ancient Glories 9

The fascinating stories of "The Arabian
Nights" impressed us even in our childhood
with the fairy splendour of the Golden Prime
of Haroun al-Raschid when Bagdad was the
capital of a vast Mohammedan dominion;
when Busrah and.Kufa were rival centres of
learning; when Arab scholars were the first
teachers of algebra and chemistry ; when the
light of learning was kept aglow in the East
while barbarian Huns desolated the lands
of Europe.

In those enlightened days the Moslem
Arabs did not massacre but freely fraternised
with the Christians, whose patriarch at
Bagdad, with twenty-five primates under
him, guided the fortunes of many flourishing
churches established between Edessa and
Pekin. The Nestorian monument found in
the Great Wall of China and the half a
million Eastern Christians in South India
testify to the activities of those early Meso-
potamian Churches.

The Arab philosophers of the Abbaside
period persuaded the Christian theologians to
translate into Arabic the works of Aristotle
and Plato, so that in sut sequent years, while
the Moorish kingdom was established in
Spain, these Arabic versions were retrans-
lated into the Romance languages of Europe,
and the search for the original Greek writings
led up to the Renaissance, which produced
the Reformation.

10 Mesopotamia : Its Ancient Glories

Similarly, the discovery of America can be
traced back to movements that took their
rise in Mesopotamia. The Euphrates Valley
had contained for centuries the "Royal
Roads" from West to East, and Charlemagne
is known to have maintained friendly com-
munications with Haroun al-Raschid ; but,
with the passing of the Abbasides, the rise of
the Turks, and the fall of Constantinople, the
world's highway was so completely blocked
that Columbus set out to seek a safer route
to the East, when he suddenly discovered
America.

Jenghis Khan, Hulagu, and Tamerlane the
Turk of Samarkand were irresistible con-
querors of a villainous and savage type, who
ruthlessly destroyed the ancient glories of
Mesopotamia.

Their devastating instincts were infused
into the Turkish tribes, whom they drove
westward from the regions of the great Gobi
plateau. Some of the Turkomans became
j anizaries to the Moslem Khalif s. They in time
usurped the authority of their masters, and
founded the Turkish dynasty at Ghazni, till
fresh hordes from Khorasan established the
authority of the Seljuks ; and, finally, at
Angora, Ertoghrul, the leader of a homeless
Turkoman tribe, founded the empire of the
Ottomans, who have completed the ravages
of Jenghis Khan and made Mesopotamia the
most desolate country on earth.

PART 11.

MESOPOTAMIA :
ITS DREARY DESOLATION.

KURNAH, the traditional Sumerian site
of man's primeval paradise, is situated
at the southern extremity of Mesopo-
tamia, 100 miles up the Shat el Arab from the
Persian Gulf, where the Tigris meets a
branch of the River Euphrates.

My heart sank within me when the captain
of the steamer introduced me, as we journeyed
from Busrah, to the boundary of my new
parish. "WeU," I said, "if this is the Garden
of Eden portion of my district, what will the
rest of it be like ? "

The natural prospect was decent enough,
but the miserable dwellings on the banks were
buUt of mud. By the side of a tall flagstaff
there was a temporary structure of reed mats,
which the captain informed me was the
Municipal Town Hall of this Turkish paradise;.
The "Mayor" had but one duty to perform
— he collected a tax levied upon every fruit-
bearing palm. A bright green nubbak tree
was declared to be the "Tree of Knowledge,"
but the captain confided in me that his father
had planted it thirty years before. The people
seemed desperately poor ; they cried out to

II

12 Mesopotamia :

the passengers, who threw them bread and
oranges from the deck of the steamer. The
dresses of the natives were truly primitive.
Most of the children were brilliantly clad in
nothing more than olive oil and a smile. One
can sympathise with the British soldier in
camp with our troops at Kurnah, who, after
a sleepless night, exclaimed to his fellow in
the tent : "Oh, Bill, I don't know how Adam
and Eve got on in this place, with all these
mosquitoes buzzing about!" "No, indeed,"
said Bill; "it wouldn't take a flaming sword
to drive me out of the Garden of Eden."

The alluvial deposit brought down by the
two great rivers for hundreds of years has
provided these extensive plains with the best
soil possible for agricultural purposes. I
travelled on one occasion for ten days between
Bagdad and Mosul, passing through Samarra
and Tikrit. It happened to be a particularly
favourable season, just after the winter rains,
when the country was covered for a few
weeks with grass and wild flowers. Our
horses were literally in clover, and at one
spot, where we pitched our tent for the night,
we picked nineteen varieties of wild flowers
within a few yards of the tent door. Yet
nothing strikes the traveller so much as the
immense quantity of thorns and thistles that
cover the greater part of Mesopotamia and
Asiatic Turkey ; millions of acres of good
arable land are overrun with thorns and

Its Dreary Desolation 13

weeds, indicative of the grossest possible
neglect.

The whole country has, likewise, been
practically deforested ; the very roots of
trees have been sold at 40s. a ton to provide
fuel for the population. When travelling
once from Kifri to Mosul I noted the fact that
for a distance of seventy miles, where the soil
was capable of producing the fairest vegeta-
tion, we passed but one solitary tree,

Mesopotamia is now an ideal entomologists'
paradise, for nothing seemed to flourish so
profusely as the vermin and insect life. I
caught sixty scorpions one winter in the
ground floor of my Bagdad house. I have
attacked centipedes in my drawing-room and
haye shaken them out of my blankets.
Mosquitoes were numerous enough, but the
sand-flies were everywhere ; the common
house-fly attacked you in battalions, and was
gifted with a more piercing bite than the
average mosquito. Some one has truly said
that "the tiniest little insect in Mesopotamia
night and day faithfully does its bit." When
in summer, according to custom, we dined
upon the roof of the house, our table was
often covered with a multitude of winged
insects, varying in size from the largest beetle
to the smallest may-fly.

On account of the neglected banks, there
were frequent floods and unsavoury swamps
where myriads of insects breed. I was once

14 Mesopotamia :

lost for hours, while being punted in a native
boat, amid the tall reeds of one of these
swamps that covered an area of twenty-five
square miles.

In 1895 an unprecedented rise in the river
destroyed some of the banks to the north of
Bagdad, with the result that four hundred
square miles of arable land was covered with
deep water. The city was an island for
months. Twelve hundred brick-buUt dwel-
lings collapsed, and from two to six feet of
water appeared in the serdabs or cellars of
every house. Hundreds of Arabs lost their
lives, many mud and mat villages were swept
away, while thousands of sheep perished.

One strange result of these continuous
floods was the plague of frogs. They literally
swarmed by the million in the swamps and
pools. They were possessed of an astonish-
ing variety of voices, so that you could hear
their squeaking, squealing, singing, and
croaking long before you came in sight of
the reeds or could smell the odours of their
watery home.

Travelling on one occasion from Bagdad
to Babylon, I calculated upon reaching my
first stopping-place at the end of a five-hours
ride, but we suddenly came across an unex-
pected flood which necessitated a detour that
lengthened our journey by three hours. I was
desperately hungry, for the food was locked
up in the mule trunks, and we dared not stop

Its Dreary Desolation 15

lest we should be benighted in a roadless and
robber-infested plain. We reached, at length,
a pontoon bridge, and were received by
polite Turkish officials, who refreshed us with
black coffee and levied an enormous tax,
which we gladly paid for the privilege of
escaping from the flooded plain.

On arrival at the caravanserai that night
we overheard the Arab muleteers cursing the
Turkish officials, who, in view of the busy
pilgrim season which had just begun, took
advantage of a rise of the rivers, breached
their banks, flooded the pilgrim road, farmed
out the taxes of a new pontoon bridge, and
pocketed thousands of pounds till the floods
subsided, for great were the spoils which the
Turkish governors shared with the robber
bands who looted the benighted caravans
that failed to reach the bridge before dusk.

The great River Euphrates became un-
navigable through the folly of the Turks, and
the river bed at Babylon was often absolutely
dry. In order to irrigate some Crown lands
property, foolish Turkish officials opened a
watercourse some miles north of Babylon in
such a way that the bulk of the waters
created the new Hindiah Canal and flooded
an enormous area of once cultivable land.
Thousands of pounds were annually spent on
a feeble attempt to repair the damage that
was done, until at last a British engineering
firm was called in to erect the magnificent

i6 Mesopotamia :

barrage, which was completed a few months
before the outbreak of war, and stands as a
monument to the skill of British engineers.
It began successfully to stem the waters of
the Hindiah flood and drove* back a fair por-
tion of the stream into the original channel
of the Euphrates, restoring prosperity to the
ruined gardens of Babylon.

One could not but admire the energies of
German archaeologists who nobly supple-
mented the earlier efforts of British excava-
tors in an attempt to preserve the ancient
treasures of Mesopotamia. The Turks them-
selves preserved nothing, and have left no
monuments of their own behind them. There
is not a single building — ^not even a ruin — a
canal, a bridge, or a solitary tree to which we
could point as a worthy monument to the
centuries of Turkish occupation of Mesopo-
tamia. This most fertile region of the earth
that enriched the inhabited world for thou-
sands of years has been gradually reduced to
dust and ashes, and even the precious monu-
ments of its ancient glories have suffered from
the ruthless folly and vandalism of the Turk.
The authorities permitted the mounds of
Babylon to be used as a quarry, and the well-
made bricks of Nebuchadnezzar can be seen
in the older houses of Bagdad and the small
towns on the Euphrates.

In 1898 I stood before two marble monu-
ments of winged Assyrian lions amid the

its Dreary Desolation 17

ruins of ancient Nineveh ; but on a second
visit, four years later, I noticed that one of
them had been broken to pieces. The miller
close by wanted some stone for the repair of
his mill, so he gave a bribe to the Turkish
guardian, and the marble lion, worth hundreds
of pounds, was demolished for a few piastres.

Ctesiphon has also suffered from gross
neglect. Forty years ago both wings of the
fagade were standing by. the sides of the
wonderful arch. But the ruin was of no
account to the Turk, and the bricks within
reach at the base were extracted and disposed
of in return for small bribes to petty officials,
so that one of the wings eventually gave way,
and the fallen material was used for the paltry
structures at Salman Pak.

Mesopotamia contains many underground
rivers of valuable petroleum which here and
there finds its way to the surface. I was once
travelling down the Tigris from Mosul upon
a raft of inflated sheepskins when, near
Gyarah, we came to a black rock protruding
from mid-stream, out of which there flowed a
stream of oil almost as thick as one's wrist,
polluting the river for many mUes 'below.

The ridiculous efforts made by the Turks
to utilise a minimum quantity of this valuable
oil may provide a ludicrous reason for the
Turkish claim to a place, in this twentieth
century, amongst the civilised nations of
Europe.

i8 Mesopotamia :

Mesopotamia has an evil name amongst
medical specialists as being the home of the
bubonic plague, which has often spread to
other lands from these dreaded regions, and
in 183 1 carried off half thg population of
Bagdad. Our British Mission doctors have
been the only medical men who dared, on
three separate occasions within the last
twenty years, when the Turks fled from the
city, to stay behind and grapple with the
desolating ravages of cholera. I once accom-
panied our doctor to a large village near
Mosul, where he found 60 per cent, of the
villagers suffering from ophthalmia, and at
least 10 per cent, of them had lost their sight.
There was not a single municipal hospital or
dispensary in the whole vilayet.

It is impossible to adequately describe the
puerility which characterised the acts of
quarantine officials. It may be that some of
the chief officials honestly formulated rules
for safeguarding the health of the inhabitants,
but certainly, in actual practice, the elaborate
quarantine arrangements were carried out
with the sole object of blackmailing travellers
and filling the pockets of officials. The
lazarettos were death-traps and the hotbeds
of epidemics.

The Turkish Customs were of a like char-
acter. The Government Treasury suffered
from the absurdities of a system that farmed
out the privilege of receiving bribes from

Its Dreary Desolation m

merchants and travellers who brought goods
into the country. There were custom-houses
everywhere ; the officials at Busrah would
board the steamers and worry the passengers
for paltry presents. Then, again, at Bagdad
another set of officials had to be similarly
satisfied, and so on at every large town in
Turkey.

My valuable library was the bane of the
Bagdad censor and an awful grief to my
innocent heart when first I wandered abroad.
Six hundred precious books were strewn for
weeks about the floor of the censor's office
and frequently trampled underfoot. The
young Jewish interpreter was supposed to
read them through and scrawl his name,
without a capital letter, over the front page
of every volume before it could be passed.
Week by week he came to my house beaming
with smiles, expecting a few silver coins,
which added considerably to the facility with
which he reviewed my scholastic treasures in
many hitherto unknown tongues. A brand-
new copy of the "Historical Geography of
the Holy Land," with seventy other similar
valuable books, were pilfered from me by the
Chairman of the Council of Education. In
spite of much correspondence, and even an
appeal to Constantinople, such dangerous
geographical volumes could not possibly be
allowed to enter the enlightened city of
Bagdad.

20 Mesopotamia :

I opened book stores in Mosul and in
Bagdad, and sent my agent on a long journey
to Beyrout that he might purchase stock from
the different publishing houses of that great
Turkish city. I determined to sell nothing
that was not officially permitted or produced
in the Turkish Empire itself. Hundreds of
books, however, were purloined by the
censor, and amongst them three dozen copies
of "The Arabian Nights' Entertainment," in
Arabic, published by a Beyrout press, were
ruthlessly destroyed, so the Turkish officials
told me ; but I saw them later on being sold
by my native rivals in the bazaar.

I opened the only British schools in Meso-
potamia after fifteen months of wearisome
conflicts with the Council of Education. One
of my bosom friends and a companion in
adversity, whom I frequently met at the
Education Office, was the headmaster of the
Turkish Military School, a rej&ned Turk of
reforming tendencies and enlightened views.
He did his best for his country ; but his
sufferings at the hands of the standardised
Turk during the fifteen years I was intimately
acquainted with him would fill a volume of a
deeply depressing type.

Mesopotamia provided a striking example
of the whole corrupt and foolish system of
Turkish civil administration.

The Wall Governor bought his appointment
in Constantinople. On arrival at Mosul,

Its Dreary Desolation 21

Bagdad, or Busrah, his chief concern was to
recoup his impoverished purse. The local
chiefs, minor officials, and all those who had
paid for his predecessor's friendship, must
now hurry up and bring fresh presents or fall
into disfavour and be deposed.

A tour of the vilayet would be undertaken
as soon as possible, not for administrative
purposes, but chiefly for finding out what
means there were of squeezing the sheikhs
and the populace. The prisons at such times
were filled not with criminals, but with
recalcitrant chiefs who, for some reason or
other, had failed to produce the dues which
the Governor had imposed.

The construction of rog.ds, railways, and
works of public utility was impossible by
such methods. They took too long to bring
adequate remuneration to the promoters of
such schemes, and Turkish governors were
being constantly changed through the appear-
ance at the Sublime Porte of a higher bidder
for the coveted post.

The average Turkish official found it more
convenient to make terms with the ruffians
of the Empire and the robber bands. The
truly respectable Arabs looked with disdain
upon the Maadani tribes of Lower Mesopo-
tamia, who were expert thieves, as the
British troops learned to their cost, when ;o
often blankets, bedding, crockery, and
saddlery took to themselves legs, and even a

22 Mesopotamia :

marquee under force majeure walked away
one night from the British camp.

It paid the Turkish officials to share the
spoils with these uncouth gipsies. They
could easily pretend abhorrence of their
crimes, and when, by a stroke of good luck,
the Arabs robbed a consul instead of a pious
pilgrim the Turks could display their zeal for
righteousness by hurrying forth with a puni-
tive expedition and depriving the poor
robbers of their promised share of all last
season's loot.

When approaching Kerkuk on one occa-
sion, we suddenly espied a band of the
terrible Hamavand. The zaptiah warned me
to hide my money at the bottom of my
Wellington boots, to put on my blue goggles
and sun helmet so as to look as dignified a
European as possible, whUe he himself rode
ahead to parley with the robber chief.
Silently and solemnly we approached the
band of over fifty well-armed horsemen.
Suddenly the chief's son dashed out from
amongst the others and came galloping on
towards me. He raised his rifle, and I feared
the Turkish zaptiah had failed to come to
terms with the chief, so that we were doomed
to be robbed. It was only when the muzzle of
his gun was within a couple of yards of my
breast that he suddenly burst into laughter,
swerved round, and exclaimed that he was
only showing me what a clever man he was.

Its Dreary Desolation 23

and that because I was an Englishman his
father's men would do us no harm.

When we reached the city we found the
Kaimakam or Deputy^overnor had been
practically a prisoner in the Government
House for a few days as these Hamavand had
peppered his doors and windows with rifle
fire because he had dared to claim too large a
share of the spoils acquired by their recent
ravages on passing caravans.

The " inhabitants of Mosul habitually re-
ferred to Mustapha Pasha as "The Pig with
a Gun," for the story is current that a wild
boar desolated the gardens around a certain
village. The terrified villagers were unable to
deal with their enemy. They hired a famous
hunter, who arrived with his gun ready for
the fray. At length he sighted the boar, which
made a desperate dash at the hunter, who
funked the situation, turned to flee, was over-
taken by the boar, which caught the strap of
the gun with its tusk, and dashed past with
the rifle hanging around its neck. The
villagers angrily exclaimed: "We paid you
to deliver us from the pig that ravaged our
crops, but now you have left us a pig with a
gun!"

Mustapha Pasha was a terror to travellers
and the inhabitants of the country for many
miles north of Mosul. The Turkish authori-
ties, who bleed their subjects with excessive
taxation, were unable to suppress the

24 Mesopotamia ,

marauder, so they elevated him to the rank
of a pasha, and enrolled his tribe of Kurdish
rufifians into the ranks of the regular army
with the dignity of the famous Hamidieh.

I have often listened to the" bitterest com-
plaints launched by all sections of the popula-
tion against the Turkish tax-collectors. A
village was ordered to pay one-tenth of its
produce to the Government. The tax-
collectors, with their escort, were bUleted on
the villagers for weeks. Worthless receipts
were frequently foisted upon the chiefs, the
numbers were constantly tampered with,
with the net result that the greater part of
the village produce was appropriated by the
tax-collectors, and the amount that was left
to the villagers was barely sufficient to clothe
them in rags and to enable them to keep
body and soul together.

I reached the Moslem village of Deli Abbas
on one occasion just a few hours after the
arrival of the tax-collectors and their military
escort. We could find no shelter in the town
as every khan and vacant room was occupied.
In a back street we were advised to hammer
at the door of a closed shop. Some of the
neighbours told us that the owner was dead ;
but when they understood I was an English-
man, who has a reputation in Mesopotamia for
paying his debts and keeping his plighted
word, the dead man came to life again, and
quietly placed his house at our disposal.

Its Dreary Desolation 25

Turkish despotism has recorded its devihy
on the pages of history in letters of blood ;
it has recently threatened to annihilate all
its subject-races — the Jews of Palestine, the
Arabs of Syria, the Druzes of the Lebanon ;
it has gloated over the woes of Armenia, the
worst the world has ever heard ; it has
blighted the fairest lands of the Levant ; it
has made Mesopotamia the vale of misery.
And will not countless myriads, for centuries
to come, curse that fatal day when Turko-
Prussian militarism combined to slaughter
mankind by millions, to obliterate civilisa-
tion, and to drive humanity to a terrestrial
hell?

PART III

MESOPOTAMIA :
ITS FUTURE PROSPECTS.

IT is no exaggeration to say that the whole
world's peace, its progress, and pros-
perity hang largely upon the settlement
of the many problems associated with this
unique country of Mesopotamia.

(i) The development of its natural re-
sources is a matter of some importance to
multitudes. (2) The reopening of its ancient
highways and the construction of great trunk
railways to India and the Far East are
matters of still greater importance, especially
to the inhabitants of the Eastern Hemisphere.
(3) But of the very deepest concern to all
mankind is the prospect that in the settle-
ment of Mesopotamia and the adjacent lands
of Islam lies the possible doom of despotism
and the dawn of a better era for the inhabi-
tants of all five continents.

(i) Half a century may be needed for the
reafforestation and recovery of a land like
Palestine, but a very few years will suffice for
restoring prosperity to Mesopotamia. Its
rich alluvial plains are capable of immediate
developments, irrigation schemes have already
been thought out, and modern engineering
skill can quickly transform this desolate land

26

Mesopotamia : Its Future Prospects 27

into one of the finest wheat-fields in ' the
world. Such a development alone would
obviously benefit the working classes of
Europe, for so great an increase in the world's
wheat supplies would doubtless reduce the
price of the peoples' bread. There are also
excellent prospects for the cultivation of
cotton, for the further extension of the
remarkably fruitful date gardens and orange
groves, for the breeding of ponies, and the
rearing of Angora goats, which produce the
famous sUky wool so highly prized by manu-
facturers. The vast undeveloped oilfields are
of priceless value at a time when our needs
for this essential commodity have so enor-
mously increased, when nearly every engine
and all the most modern ships are being
constructed to be run by oil fuel.

The Anglo-Saxon race for over a century
has done much to foster improvements in these
afflicted lands. Comfortable river steamers
have regularly plied between Bagdad and
Busrah, and along the Karun River to Ahwaz.
Enormous quantities of dates, liquorice, wool,
gum, valonia, and other products have been
annually exported to the West by British and
American merchants. Their commercial enter-
prises, carried on under exceptionally trying
circumstances, greatly alleviated the abject
poverty and squalor into which the Turks
had driven the inhabitants of Mesopotamia.

British firms opened up the road from

28 Mesopotamia :

Ahwaz into Persia, built the Hindiah barrage,
introduced wool presses and ice factories, the
earliest banks, and the latest machinery.
They actually started, at their own expense,
the camel post from Bagd'ad to Damascus,
which was subsequently absorbed into the
Turkish Postal Union.

The great oil-refining factory south of
Busrah, with its wonderful wharves and other
fine buildings that cover an area of more than
two square miles, gives employment to nearly
7,000 men. The crude oil is brought from
different wells through nearly 200 miles of
pipe lines to the refinery at Abadan ; and
this remarkable establishment, which has
financially benefited both the Government
and people of Persia more than any other
commercial undertaking in the country, is
the fruit of long and laborious efforts made
by a British syndicate in a land of sweltering
summers where dangers and difficulties
abound.

In less than two years British occupation
has transformed Lower Mesopotamia into
something approaching a paradise. The
population of Busrah has enormously in-
creased, and the inhabitants have never
before been so well off. Excellent wharves
have been erected on the banks of the great
Shat-el-Arab for the ocean-going steamers
which, under the Turkish regime, took days
to accomplish what can now be done more

its Future Prospects 2^

ecoiiomically in a few hours. Every creek
has been bridged in this "Venice of the
East"; numbers of roads have been made;
electric hght has been installed ; electric trams
have invaded this long-neglected port ; while
an equally wonderful transformation is
already taking place in the city of Bagdad.
Thousands of men have repaired the river
banks, the Euphrates is becoming navigable,
and for the first time for centuries there have
been no pernicious floods this year in Lower
Mesopotamia. Two railway lines are spread-
ing away to the north; an embankment of
twenty miles long has recovered for agricul-
tural purposes a marshy area of forty-eight
square miles, where wheat-fields, vegetable
gardens, dairy farms, and poultry farms, all
under the care of professional farmers from
India, are adequately providing for the needs
of the British Forces in Mesopotamia and
preparing to send food supplies to the British
Isles. These astoundingSy rapid changes are
only illustrations of what can easily be done
by a just and wise administration of a fertile
country like Mesopotamia.

Such developments have their counter-
part, on a much larger scale, in India, for the
armed forces of Great Britain prove to be the
harbingers of prosperity and peace, while
the Turkish domination is everywhere coin-
cident with ruin and decay.

There is one more point which ought to be

30 Mesopotamia :

mentioned in this connection. It is surely of
some interest to civilised peoples that the
ancient monuments of Mesopotamia should
be properly preserved. The land for centuries
has been almost closed to travellers from the
West ; but if only the treasures of Babylon
and Nineveh could be made as accessible as
the treasures of Egypt, historians would gain a
clearer insight into the records of the past, and
the modern inhabitants of Mesopotamia would
be enriched by the stream of tourists who would
greatly value a visit to this wonderful land.

(2) Germany claims to be credited with
the greatest discovery of modern times. One
of her newspapers declared that "the year
1492, when America was discovered, and
19 16, when the colossal idea of the new road
to India was born, are dates which genera-
tions to come will regard as co-equal and
epoch-making." Her claim is unjustified,
though it is probably true that the reopening
of this old highway will prove to be of equal
importance to the world as the discovery of
America by Columbus ; but the credit of the
so-called discovery belongs to Great Britain,
who published plans for the opening up of
the Euphrates Valley before Unified Germany
was born.

I have an interesting photograph of a
tablet erected near Busrah to the memory of
a number of British officers who lost their
lives near Anah af the time of the Euphrates

Its Future Prospects 31

Expedition in 1836. It is also common know-
ledge that in 185 1 we held concessions for the
Euphrates Valley railway. The time, how-
ever, was not ripe for the development of this
important route, for the retrograde Ottoman
Empire blocked the way. We did our utmost
to introduce reforms into Turkey, hoping
that she would fall into line with European
standards and co-operate with civilised
nations in the development of an important
area of the earth's surface. Germany's evil
counsels, however, have tended to frustrate
our efforts to secure the reform of Turkish
administration, and, with the aid of her
Bagdad railway schemes, Germany made a
deliberate attempt to establish in the most
strategic centre of the earth a formidable
coalition of uresponsible despotic monarchies
from the banks of the Elbe to the banks of
the Indus. In spite of her attempts to wreck
modern civilisation, the world will still be
able to make a rapid recovery on one essential
condition — that the new highways from West
to East shall be kept free from the influence
of despotisms that defy the rights of humanity
and ignore the fundamental principles of our
twentieth-century civilisation.

It was in the days of Queen Elizabeth,
before the East India Company was started,
that Aleppo — now the pivot of Germany's
Asiatic schemes — became the centre of
Britain's overseas comnjercial enterprises and

32 Mesopotamia :

the headquarters of our great Levant Com-
pany. The silks from China had been coming,
for hundreds of years, by slow caravan
process across the old "Silk Street" route
from Pekin to the Mediterranean, and
British merchants forwarded from Alexan-
dretta the treasures from the East, by
sailing ships, to the British Isles. The dis-
covery by Vasco da Gama of the Cape route
to India ruined many of the ports in the
Mediterranean, and eventually led to our
evacuation of Aleppo. The remarkable
developments in navigation by steamships,
combined more recently with the opening of
the Suez Canal, may have led us to rely too
confidently upon the permanence of the
superiority of our overseas communications.

The many important changes which have
been taking place on land must not be over-
looked. Railway communications have been
vastly improved. I have journeyed from
Constantinople to Ostend in three and a half
days with the greatest ease ; and, when the
new Asiatic lines are completed, it will be
possible to travel comfortably from London
to India in seven days. It is furthermore
conceivable that these trunk lines will be
extended without a break to Madras, when
we shall have a journey of fifteen days from
London to Australia — by railroad to Madras
and steamship to Port Darwen.

Since the outbreak of war the Germans

Its Future Prospects 33

have completed a new line of railway through
Palestine to the Egyptian frontier, and we
also have constructed a railway across the
Sinaitic Desert to Palestine. There is no
doubt, therefore, that the Cape-to-Cairo
railway will soon be connected with the great
European and Asiatic systems by a line
running through Palestine to Aleppo. Then
the old "Silk Street" route, so recently
explored by Sir Aurel Stein, will doubtless be
covered more or less with a railway system ;
and we may consequently anticipate the
joining up of rapid communications over
these many ancient highways, in practically
a straight line from London to India and
Australia, from Paris to Pekin, and from
Petrograd to the Cape. All these will pass
through Aleppo, now the headquarters of
Germany's Bagdad railway schemes, which
makes it a matter of vital interest and con-
cern to the millions of the British Empire
that Germany's attempts to destroy our
shipping coincide with her effort to grasp by
force of arms the most important lines of
overland communications. It must not be
forgotten that these direct overland routes
will assume still greater importance with the
establishment of aviation stations. We are
making wondrous strides in aerial navigation,
and when recent inventions are diverted to
peaceful purposes it will be possible, we are
told, to send mails and passengers from

34 Mesopotamia :

London to India in three days by aerial
navigation in practically a straight line.
Lord Montagu suggested a route across
Russia to the Punjab, but it is more probable
that aviation stations will be established
across the continent of Europe and down the
Euphrates Valley. If the journey will take
but three days from London to India, with
plenty of time for rest and sleep on the way,
may it not soon be possible for our colonial
representatives of the contemplated Imperial
Parliament to come within a week from the
shores of Australia to the portals of West-
minster ? These tremendous changes which
are now taking place amongst civilised
peoples make it certain that the central
portion of the Eastern Hemisphere, which
forms a natural connecting link between the
three continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa,
will undoubtedly become one of the most
important portions of the earth's surface.
These changes will facilitate the opening up
of enormous countries hitherto largely closed
to modern commercial enterprise or exploited
only by a few adventurous Europeans. The
vast populations of Asia and Africa will be
able to play a better part in the development
of the continents and the progress of
humanity. There is plenty of room for
everybody ; and what a difference it may
make to Europe, with the new facilities
afforded to emigration and colonisation, when

Its Future Prospects 35

the Antipodes can be brought so near to the
congested areas of European lands !

(3) Is it possible, we inquire with bated
breath, that so optimistic an outlook is
justified by the trend of current events ? Is
the time ripe for such momentous changes,
for the entry of mankind into a new era so
markedly different from all that is gone
before ? An encouraging answer comes to us
from Mesopotamia and the lands of the
Middle East. We must look beyond this
recrudescence of savagery in Europe, beyond
the remarkable revolution in Russia, to the
still more wonderful revolt that has taken
place in the lands of Islam, where two
opposing forces have long been struggling for
supremacy, where despotism at last has been
defeated and the forces of civilisation are
once more in the ascendant. When the
Kaiser in Damascus stood by the tomb of
Saladin and proclaimed himself the
"Defender of Islam," he fondly reckoned
upon the support of the Saracens to wrench
from Great Britain the most peaceful and
flourishing portions of the Islamic world.
Now, however, when the call has gone forth
from the Ottoman Khalif that the Moslem
world should rise and ruin the British Empire
by all the sacred sanctions of a "Holy War,"
we gaze with wonder and amazement at the
unprecedented spectacle of Mecca, Kerbela,
the Arab race, and the bulk of the Moslem

36 Mesopotamia :

world lending valiant support to Great
Britain in the last crusade for driving the
uncivilised Turk, with all his despotism, from
Palestine and Mesopotamia. My meaning will
be obvious to those who have lived in the
East, but I must make this important point
a little more clear to my readers in the West.
The city of Mecca, in Arabia, is the
religious centre of nearly three hundred
millions of Mohammedans. The adherents of
Islam are divide,d into two great sects : the
Sunnis, to which the Turks belong, and the
Shiahs, to which the Persians and large
numbers of our Indian Mohammedans belong.
Kerbela, which is situated in Mesopotamia,
near Babylon, is considered by the Shiahs to
be the most sacred city on earth. The Sultan
of Turkey is nominally the religious head or
Khalif of aU the Mohammedans in the world,
and one well-known feature of Islamic belief
is the supposed sacred obligation that the
true faith must be spread by the power of the
sword, whenever the Khalif calls upon his
people to join the "Jehad" or Holy War.
Some of my most affectionate friends in
Mesopotamia were deeply pious Mohamme-
dans, and most of them have expressed to me
their dissent from the old interpretation of
the Koran which justified the call to a
"Jehad" for the purpose of massacring and
robbing Jews and Christians and for the
enthronement of military despotism under

Its Future Prospects 37

the cloak of religion. Hitherto, however, the
old interpretation has prevailed amongst the
adherents of Islam. Untold atrocities have
been committed in the name of the Prophet,
and vast civilisations in Europe, North
Africa, India, and the Near East have been
laid desolate at different times by Moslem
fanaticism. But to-day we are face to face
with one of the most remarkable signs of the
times. At the instigation of Germany, the
religious head of the Mohammedan world
proclaimed a "Holy War." Every effort was
made to bring it to a successful issue ; intri-
guers in Egypt, India, and Arabia did their
best to stir up the fanaticism of religious
enthusiasts, and never before have Moham-
medans possessed so favourable a chance of
destroying their rivals and extending the
faith of Islam by the power of the sword.
The Shereef of Mecca was surrounded by the
Turks, who garrisoned the Holy City ; he
was urged to lend the sanction of that
sacred place to the Sultan's demands for a
religious rising.

The Muj tabid of Kerbela is the most
influential leader of the Shiah sect, and his
co-operation was also demanded by the
Turks ; yet both these prominent chiefs of
the Sunnis and the Shiahs, with many other
distinguished leaders like the Aga Khan, the
Sultan of Zanzibar, the Sultan of Muscat, the
Nizam of Hyderabad, the Amir of Afghani-

38 Mesopotamia :

Stan, and the Shah of Persia, all deliberately
refused to support the military despotism of
the Turks, and actually took up arms in
defence of the standards of modern civilisa-
tion. The Mujtahid of Kerbela sent a telegram
to King George congratulating him upon the
British occupation of the city of Bagdad, and
the Arabic proclamation which was read to
the inhabitants has been received with
unbounded enthusiasm in Mesopotamia. The
proclamation declared that our troops had
entered Bagdad not as conquerors, but as
liberators, to restore to the Arabs the heritage
of their forefathers.

When I was last in Kerbela I enjoyed the
privilege of a conversa,tion with the chief
Mujtahid. I happened to be visiting a former
pupil of mine, now the much-respected
British Consular Agent of Kerbela. The
Mujtahid came into the consulate whilst I
was there, and, in the course of conversation,
remarked how great an admirer he was of the
British race. He knew nothing of our Army
and little of our Navy, except what thousands
of pilgrims that came from India had told
him ; but from all his visitors he gathered
the same impression that the British authori-
ties were distinguished for their honesty,
truthfulness, and justice. He gave me two
illustrations from his own experience, one,
when Sir E. O'Malley was sent all the way
from Constantinople to the city of Bagdad

Its Future Prospects 3^

for the purpose of giving a fair trial to a
miserable Indian Moslem who had murdered
a fellow pilgrim, when the busy manager of
the Imperial Ottoman Bank and other lead-
ing Englishmen of the city were cited to form
the jury on this memorable occasion. What
trouble and expense for the purpose of
dealing justly with a miserable outcast who
happened to be a British Indian subject, and
what a contrast to the corruption of the
Turkish courts ! Then, also, he reminded me
that a former King of Oudh had, at his
demise, left the whole of his private fortune
for the endowment of the charities of Kerbela.
The annual income from these invested funds,
amounting to thousands of rupees, passed
annually through the British Consulate-
General to the Consular Agent at Kerbela,
and was faithfully distributed every year to
the rightful claimants without the smallest
diminution or loss. Some of it could easily
fiave been "eaten," as the Arabic language
would say. "For all the ofificials of the
Turkish Empire," said the Muj tabid, "are
gifted with "sticky fingers.' Whenever money
has to pass through their hands, and especially
if it should happen to be for charitable pur-
poses, some of it inevitably remains behind.
Don't you remember," he said, "that the
Sultan Abdul Hamid was once watching a
European conjurer who was supposed to be
swallowing silver spoons. An ambassador by

40 Mesopotamia :

his side remarked how wonderful it was.
'But,' said the Sultan, 'we can do more
wonderful things in Turkey, for I once had a
Minister of Marine who swallowed a battle-
ship. The money was pr©vided, the battle-
ship never appeared, and the money dis-
appeared.' But," continued the Muj tabid,
"the money from India meets with no
accidents," and he congratulated me upon
having established the only British schools in
Mesopotamia, "for," he declared, "your pupil
Mirza Hasan lives up to his education, as an
honourable representative of British ideals."
For twenty years we have watched the
changes taking place amongst the Arabs,
largely due to the leaven of civilisation which
has reached them from India and Egypt ; we
have seen their response to the influences of
modern education ; they have begun to move
with the times, but they have left the Turks
still wallowing far behind in sixteenth-
century savagery.

The Arabic-speaking world extends from
Arabia, in the south, through Palestine and
Mesopotamia, to Aleppo, in the north. The
whole of this country must be set free from
the blighting influences of Turkish despotism.
If the Arabs are freed, they will gradually
recover their strength, and the world will
make headway with the breaking down of
the one great barrier that has blocked the
peoples' progress for nearly five centuries. If

Its Future Prospects 41

the Turks are permitted to govern anybody but
themselves, if they continue to command the
world's important highways, then humanity
will suffer, and military despotism may once
more regain the ascendant. If Turkey
remains anywhere south of Aleppo she would
be able to force the Mohammedan world to
fall back from the point of vantage which it
has now safely reached, and would compel it
to reassert the old interpretation of a
fanatical "Jehad." If only the Arabs can
retain their freedom without the interference
of European politicians they will themselves
be able to deal with the delicate religious
questions involved in the fall of the Ottoman
Khalifate. The maintenance of peace in the
East as well as the progress of Western
peoples depend mainly upon the permanent
expulsion of the Turk, with all his robber
bands, from the world's highways, and the
grant of a charter of freedom for the dwellers
in Mesopotamia.

Printed in Great Britain by

The Menpes Printing &• Engraving Co., Ltd., Craven House,

Kingsway, London, W.C.2.

THE GERMAN DREAM "BERLIN toBUSRAH"and other developmewts

^»»»i

c^^r^

t-^

•^m^

*^

^^^^ltm&^%^

Ml

liii<ii!ii!^iJ